Hidden Potential
by RissaAngel
Summary: Before Hermione even knew what muggles were, she realized that she was different from the normal people she encountered day to day. A glimpse at Hermione's life before she received her letter to Hogwarts.


**Hidden Potential  
**Larissa  
December 2, 2004

_It's never too late to be a genius to find all the hidden potential deep in your mind_. - The Kinks, Natural Gift

On a quaint little street in the community of Gillingham, a small girl was peering out of a large glass window, gazing upon the small garden in front of the house. Bright flowers were in bloom, and crawling ivy crept up the brick walls and wound itself around a sign that read "Granger Dentistry". The little girl smiled and watched as a butterfly landed on a clump of bright pink geraniums. Her big brown eyes grew wide as she noted the flowers giving a sudden shake, as if they were brushing off the butterfly. The butterfly, obviously offended at being kicked off, flew off towards another, calmer, place to rest. She narrowed her eyes and pressed her face against the windowpane, grinning. "Ooh," she breathed.

"Hermione, dear," called a voice. A woman with wild, curly hair and a white lab coat walked out of an adjoining room and dropped to her knees to give the girl a hug. "How was school?"

"Fine, mummy," Hermione replied, hugging her mother. Once released, she looked inquisitively over her shoulder to the flowers outside, blinking. "Mrs. Parker taught us sums in arithmetic today. I like them very much." Hermione was still gazing at the garden, a secret smile playing at the corner of her lips.

"Do you really?" Mrs. Granger replied, putting her hands on her hips and grinning. "Good for you. And here I always assumed that reading was your favourite subject."

"Oh, I like that too," Hermione replied, turning back to her mother. She returned the grin, revealing a large gap in her smile from a missing front tooth. Her mother found it quite charming, and seeing the grin along with Hermione's bushy, brown hair coming out of its barrettes, she let out a quiet laugh. Mrs. Granger tried to smooth her daughter's hair out with a hand. "We'll go to the library tomorrow," she said, cocking her head to the side and giving up on Hermione's wild hair.

"I've noticed that you're reading some new books lately," a warm voice spoke up suddenly.

Mrs. Granger turned around and beamed at her husband, "Oh, hello, dear. I didn't realize you were back until I saw Hermione."

He nodded at his wife. "I escaped to the loo as soon as we returned."

"As long as we're on the subject of books," Mr. Granger started, raising an eyebrow at Hermione, "honey, how on earth did you get the dictionary down off of the bookshelf? I distinctly remember placing it up top after I looked something up the other day." He gestured to a very tall bookshelf in the corner of the lobby. The lower shelves were stacked with children's books and magazines, and up top were Mr. Granger's dentistry and reference books. "No one comes to the dentist office and reads the dictionary," he added, staring at her curiously. "You didn't climb up the shelving, did you?"

"Hermione!" Her mother scolded. "You could have been hurt!"

But Hermione shook her head quickly, glancing at the dictionary that was lying beside her satchel. "I think I wished it down," she replied, simply.

Her parents raised their eyebrows and exchanged looks. "You mean it fell?" Her father asked.

Hermione shook her head again. "No. I wanted to look up a word, but you were in the loo and mum was in her office," she blinked at her parents innocently. "It just appeared next to me."

Mrs. Granger frowned at her daughter. "Now, Hermione, that's a little far-fetched, don't you think?" She glanced at her husband with a worried expression. They had often wondered if Hermione's brightness resulted in boredom and fib telling. It wasn't the first time something similar to this had happened. She contemplated on having another talk with Hermione about the consequences of lying.

"You don't believe me." Hermione said. Although she was scarcely seven years old, she appeared to be very put out by this. "You don't believe me, just like you don't believe that there are fairies in the garden."

Mr. Granger chuckled. "Fairies like we read about in _Peter Pan_?" His warm brown eyes glittered with amusement. "I believe you, Hermione. There are such things as fairies."

Hermione, however, became more irritated by this. "I'm not kidding Dad. There were fairies in the flowers only a moment ago. I _can see_ them."

Mr. Granger nodded and gave Hermione a quick pat on the head. "I know you can, pumpkin." He gave a quick wink to Mrs. Granger and walked behind the reception desk. Evie, the Granger's receptionist, had begged off of work early to go and meet one of her many boyfriends. He rustled around in the cabinet next to her desk, obviously looking for something.

Hermione liked Evie, but Evie was always trying to get her to play tea party and dolls. Sometimes, she even offered Hermione makeup to play with. Hermione wasn't really interested in these things, but sometimes she would play just to make Evie smile. Evie had small, pearly white teeth that Hermione envied. She saw a lot of teeth, spending her free hours in the lobby of the dentistry, and Evie's were perfect, she thought. Now that she had lost her first couple teeth, she hoped they would grow in just like Evie's.

"Ah, here they are." Mr. Granger pulled out a large box containing various bags of sugar free candy. "Hermione, would you mind restocking the treasure box?" He lifted an eyebrow and winked. "Only one piece for you, though, alright?"

Hermione nodded. "Alright." She took the box of candy and hauled it over to the small treasure chest that sat in the children's corner of the library. She knelt down beside it and pressed out her skirt before opening the lid of the cardboard treasure chest. Very carefully, she distributed a fair amount of each type of candy into the treasure chest.

"I'm going back into my office," said Mrs. Granger, watching Hermione for a moment. "I have some tools I need to get cleaned up." She glanced at her husband. "Oh, and Edwin, I need you to replace a light bulb in the overhead."

"I'll be right there," he said. He shut the cabinets with a quick snap and followed his wife down the hall.

Hermione hummed to herself as she dumped the last bit of a bag of sugar free taffy into the treasure box. Carefully, she assessed all of the candy in the chest and picked out a small bag containing two sugar free gumdrops. She tore it open and popped the orange one into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Her eyes moved to the window that was in front of the garden, and she frowned slightly. Usually Evie kept an eye on her if she went outside, but she was only wanted to go out there for a moment. She figured there was no harm in that. _I'll be back before they know I'm gone, _she figured, and quietly pushed open the door To her amazement, the bells on the door didn't even jingle as she walked out. She thought it was odd, but was grateful for it, because it wouldn't alert her parents to her momentary absence.

Once outside, Hermione knelt down next to the clump of geraniums that the butterfly had landed on. She opened her fist, revealing the remaining green gumdrop. "Here," she whispered to the flower clumps, "This is for you. It's quite good, actually, even though it's sugar free." She balanced the small gumdrop between the stem and leaves of one of the flowers. Then, she stood up, brushed off her knees, and went back into the lobby.

Now that she was inside and safe, she dragged her backpack over to a chair and flopped down into it, pulling the bag onto her lap. She whistled air through the gap in her teeth in boredom and pulled a folder out of her bag. She also grabbed a pencil out of her pencil case, just in case.

Her father popped his head out of one of the offices and watched her pull out a piece of homework. "Do you have homework to complete? We don't have another appointment until four. I can help you, if you'd like."

"No, thank you. I finished it at school, I'm only double-checking it now."

Mr. Granger snorted. "Well, if you ever do need my help for anything, Hermione, please let me know. I'm beginning to feel quite useless."

Hermione giggled quietly. "You're not useless. You change light bulbs."

Her father clutched his chest and bowed his head. "How silly of me," he replied. "I had totally forgotten that I am the only dentist around here who can change light bulbs." He paused for a moment, eyeing Hermione. "Did I ever tell you how many dentists it takes to change a light bulb?" He folded his arms across his chest and chuckled to himself.

She quirked a brow at him, as though this was a test of some sort, and frowned. "No. How many does it take?"

"Three," he said. "One to administer the anaesthetic, one to extract the light bulb, and one to offer the socket some vile mouthwash." Mr. Granger looked awfully pleased with himself.

Hermione blinked at him, unsure of how to respond.

Mr. Granger snorted with laughter. "Yes, yes. I'll go back to my business. I realize that it's an awful joke, but you could have at least tried to humour me." Hermione snickered quietly at him, and hewinked an eye at her before leavingthe room.

For the next forty-five minutes, Hermione scanned over her pages and made sure that her spellings were correct and that her handwriting was impeccable. She was a very hard worker, and liked to please her teacher, Mrs. Parker. In all actuality, it pleased her to be a perfect student, and she coveted being recognized for her intelligence. Because she was an only child, her parents tended to treat her like a small adult, not that she minded any. She felt that she was better off because of it. She sighed and put away her homework, pulling out her latest book to read.

When the door jingled, Hermione glanced up from her page and noticed a young boy about her age walking towards the desk with his mother. He had ginger hair and a turned up nose, and he was very fidgety.

"Settle down, William," his mother scolded. "You wait here in the lobby while I go in to have my teeth cleaned." She prodded him towards Hermione, giving her a slight smile. "Go, on. Go."

Mrs. Granger came out and greeted William's mother, leading her back to the office for her cleaning. Once they were out of view, William turned around and narrowed his eyes at Hermione. She wrinkled her nose at him.

"What are you reading?" He asked Hermione shrewdly.

"A book," she snipped.

William was not put off by her words. "On what?"

Hermione sighed and looked at him wearily. "_Matilda_."

"Sounds boring," he replied, and dropped to his knees next to a pile of games in the children's corner.

"It's not. I rather like it." It was about a girl with strange powers, and Hermione felt an odd connection with the Matilda character. A lot of strange things happened to her, too, though she didn't share half of them with her parents.

She watched William as he took out a game of checkers and began to set up the board. He was halfway through setting up the board with the pieces on the red squares when she piped up. "You're not doing that right, you know. Move the pieces to the dark squares."

William scowled at her. "You're bossy." He did, however, move the pieces to the dark squares.

Hermione heaved a sigh and went back to her book, which she read peacefully for about thirty more seconds, until a hand grabbed the book out of her grasp and flung it onto the chair beside her. "No!" She cried, "You'll crease the pages!"

"No, you'll crease the pages," he mimicked. "Come on, let's play."

Hermione glanced at the clock. She hoped his mother had taken good care of her teeth and would not be long. "Alright," she sighed, "one game."

One game turned into two games, and when William managed to win the second game, he wanted a third as a tiebreaker. Thankfully, his mother came out and whisked him away, finished with her appointment. "See you later, bossy boots," he muttered quietly. Hermione rolled her eyes to the ceiling and ignored him.

"Hermione, put your things away," her mother said, coming up behind her. "It's time to pack up and go home."

"Yes, mum." She busied herself with her backpack, checked her book to make sure it hadn't been ruined, and straightened out her skirt. She could hear her parents chatting with each other in one of the offices. "I'm ready," she called out to them.

Mr. and Mrs. Granger walked out to the lobby, minus their lab coats, and nodded. "Lovely," Mr. Granger said, holding out a hand, "shall we go?

The three walked out the front door, and Mrs. Granger dug around in her handbag for the keys to the building. Once she had found them, she handed them over to her husband and waited for him to lock up.

In the meantime, Hermione had made her way to the garden to inspect the geraniums. She knelt down exactly where she had before, and peered into the flowers. The gumdrop was gone. She checked the ground to make sure it hadn't fallen, but it wasn't there, either.

"Everything alright, darling?" Mrs. Granger asked, squatting down and trying to figure out what her daughter was staring at.

"Yes, mum," Hermione replied, smiling her secret smile. "Everything is fine."

**

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****A/N** : I really enjoyed writing this small blurb on Hermione. I'm actually quite fond of the way I've written her father. Perhaps this intended one shot will turn into more. I'm seriously considering it. That's a feat for me, because I don't usually write chaptered stories...or anything close to being novel length. 


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